RUBIACE^E 



879 



on the stems of small plants; usually a shrub, only a few feet high. Winter-buds axillary, 

 single or in pairs or in 3's one above the other, minute, nearly immersed in the bark. Bark 



Fig. 773 



of large trunks dark gray-brown or often nearly black, divided by deep fissures into broad 

 flat ridges broken on the surface into elongated narrow scales. The bark contains tannin, 

 and has been used in the treatment of fevers and in homoeopathic practice. 



Distribution. Swamps and the low wet borders of ponds and streams; New Brunswick 

 to Ontario, southern Michigan, southern Minnesota, eastern Nebraska, Kansas and wes- 

 tern Oklahoma (near Canton, Blaine County), southward to the shores of Bay Biscayne 

 and the Everglade Keys, Dade County, Florida, eastern Texas to the valley of the Rio 

 Grande, southern New Mexico, and Arizona, and widely distributed in California; in Mex- 

 ico and Cuba; very rarely arborescent at the north and of its largest size on the margins 

 of river-bottoms and sw r amps and in pond holes in southern Arkansas and eastern Texas; 

 ascending on the southern Appalachian Mountains to altitudes of 2500; passing into var. 

 pubescens Rafn, with leaves soft pubescent below especially on the midrib and veins, and 

 pubescent petioles, inflorescence, and branchlets; southern Indiana, southeastern Missouri, 

 southern Arkansas, western Louisiana and eastern Texas to the valley of the lower Brazos 

 River. 



Occasionally cultivated in the northeastern states as an ornamental plant. 



4. GUETTARDA Endl. 







Small trees or shrubs, w r ith bitter bark, opposite or rarely verticellate persistent leaves, 

 interpetiolar deciduous stipules, and scaly buds. Flowers sessile or short-pedicellate, with or 

 without bractlets, in axillary forked pedunculate cymes, their bracts and bractlets lanceo- 

 late, acute, minute, deciduous; calyx globose, the limb produced above the ovary into an 

 elongated 4-7-lobed tube; corolla salver-shaped, with an elongated cylindric tube naked in 

 the throat, and a 4-lobed limb, the oblong lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens included; 

 filaments free, short; anthers oblong-linear; ovary 4-celled, the cells elongated, tubular; 

 style stout; stigma capitate; ovule solitary, suspended on the thickened funicle from the 

 inner angle of the cell. Fruit a fleshy 1-stoned 2-9-seeded subglobose drupe, with thin 

 flesh, and a bony or ligneous globose 4-9-celled stone obtusely angled or sulcate, the cells 

 narrow and often curved upward. Seed compressed, suspended on the thick funicle clos- 

 ing the orifice of the wall of the stone, straight or excurved; albumen thin and fleshy; 

 embryo elongated, cylindric or compressed; cotyledons flat, minute, not longer than the 

 elongated terete radicle turned toward the hilum. 



